Fed Should Heed Support for Filtration Avoidance

By DAVID FERGUSON

According to Jeanne Fox, regional administrator of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the city's announcement that Mosholu Golf Course was its preferred site for a filtration plant "reignited a debate about the need for filtration"(Opinion article, Jan. 14-27, 1999). Where has Ms. Fox been for the past 26 months? I count over 300 hearings, meetings, field trips and events that we've attended including several in Fox's own offices. We've also participated in EPA meetings on water quality standards in Philadelphia, Chicago. and Washington.

The city's Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) could hardly characterize the debate as having suddenly reignited. To date, my video tape file includes 42 meetings in which we participated with DEP on the many issues surrounding filtration. We've also toured DEP's Whole Farm Program, the Westchester Airport, and forestry management programs and wetlands; promoted a Gaia Institute watershed restoration project being funded by DEP and EPA, petitioned the state to reclassify streams, and joined in legal action to prevent weakening of septic siting regulations. We've led the battle to protect the Kensico Reservoir from highway and airport expansions. We've appeared repeatedly in newspapers, TV and on the radio. We've supported residents of the Croton watershed working to protect our water and the rural character of their towns at planning board meetings. Fox also ignores our ongoing court challenges to EPA policy.

In fact, the filtration alternative fire has spread throughout the Croton watershed and beyond the Bronx to the rest of the city. The Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition represents 42 environmental, housing, civic and religious groups with a membership of over 150,000 -- groups ranging from Concerned Residents of Southeast in Putnam County to the Council of Chelsea Block Associations in Manhattan.

Despite this broad support, Fox continues to put down arguments for filtration alternatives as a "not-in-my-backyard" reaction. Where's the skepticism about ardent supporters -- developers, unions, multinational corporations and bureaucrats who stand to benefit? Two years ago Fox invited us to a dialogue. Whatever we've had, it hasn't been dialogue. When asked for Croton filtration's scientific rationale, EPA still resorts to the same old undocumented allegations.

Public Health
We're told, "it's a matter of public health," as if those of us, who are working full time on this issue and drinking the water, are against public health.

We're told we need a $660 million filtration plant to be in compliance with tougher disinfection byproduct standards, though studies to justify those standards are not complete. Where's the analysis comparing the health benefits of this industrial facility to the benefits of spending part of the money protecting water quality at the source and the rest, for example, treating those who can't afford health care? We're already, purportedly, spending tens of millions of dollars to upgrade 61 Croton sewage treatment plants. And buying a filtration plant is like buying a car. You don't go anywhere without paying for fuel, maintenance, insurance and financing.

"EPA officials" as reported by The New York Times, "said the water requires filtering because it poses a threat to children and people whose immune systems are suppressed by illnesses like AIDS," despite the fact that DEP records on file at EPA show cryptosporidium declining from an already very low level in the Croton.

Fox reiterates EPA's "multi-barrier" approach: source protection plus filtration. But the healthy biodiversity of a natural system like the Croton is a multi-barrier system. Introduction of a filtration plant would encourage unwise development, harming the balance of this resilient but fragile ecosystem that still cleanses water more thoroughly than chemical filtration.

Ecosystems damaged by unwise development may spawn new organisms beyond filtration's capacity to remove them, among them Pfiesteria, a microbe which pollution caused to become highly toxic.

Watershed Deregulation
EPA's ultimate retort: "It's the law. We have the power to make you build." Setting aside the dubious process by which Croton filtration was required (filtration without representation) and that the Surface Water Treatment Rule (SWTR) is a rule, not a law, we come to the inherent conflict between the Clean Water Act and the SWTR. The Clean Water Act says waters are to be made safe to swim and fish and where required, to drink, except when conflict with certain other "assigned uses" makes it impossible to avoid a certain degree of pollution. A hard act to follow. The SWTR governs drinking water at the point where it enters a distribution system. Neither specifically addresses the land use implications of the watershed protection that ultimately determines water quality. Result: filtration.

Land acquisition is a major part of watershed protection. Then why is it that, after two years, not one dime of the meager $18.5 million allocated for Croton land purchase has been spent? Perhaps because the city agreed not to solicit Croton property, buying only if the owner offers to sell. So while DEP focuses on filtration, Donald Trump buys up properties for six golf courses in the watershed.

For three days at its recent meeting in Philadelphia, the EPA emphasized "flexibility" in Clean Water Act enforcement. The EPA's response to city and state watershed management has been remarkable for its restraint. Yet when it comes to filtration, it's a one-size-fits-all, inflexible demand. EPA is unwilling to even consider why Croton water continues to meet current standards despite existing development or how we might do more to aid water quality through enhancing this troubled but uniquely endowed ecosystem.

Selective enforcement allows a few large property owners to outweigh the many water consumers and ratepayers who are frightened by talk of degraded water, unaware of alternatives and in no position to evaluate the myriad daily regulatory decisions that determine the cost and quality of water. By the time filtration's cost hits home, it's too late. Few ratepayers connect water costs with EPA's lax enforcement as reported in the Times last June: "The inspector general of the EPA has documented widespread failures by federal and local officials in several states to police even the most basic requirements of the nation's clean air and water laws."

Money for the monitoring system Robert Kennedy, Jr. fought to include in the Watershed Agreement and EPA supported, has, two years later, not been appropriated. Extensive monitoring would give us a much needed base line by which to measure water quality throughout the watershed, facilitating that "strong watershed protection" Fox advocates in print. Yet, EPA officials deny they have authority to expedite this matter.

Finally, we look to the EPA for a policy that integrates protection of all those ecosystems that make our fragile planet habitable. Global warming for instance. Filtration plants use vast amounts of energy which contribute to the greenhouse effect, trapping energy which increasingly finds an outlet in devastating storms, which, in turn, have a disastrous impact on water quality and public health.

All we want is the chance to prove the water quality can be protected without filtration through the same "dual track" arrangement given the Catskill/Delaware watershed. Filtration avoidance in the Croton is not only more economical but also the more prudent way to protect public health.

David Ferguson, a Manhattan resident, is a member of the Croton Watershed Clean Water Coalition and the HDFC (Housing Development Fund Corporation) Coalition.

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